I hate writing these. If I'm writing, it means that thousands
or millions of users that do the recommended "Let all the
patches auto-install" just got another scar on their body by
applying all patches without waiting or checking.

In this case, I was the victim.

Fortunately for me, I can diagnose and repair this.

If you've got a propeller hat in the closet, you can to. If
you don't, it is time to call your computer guy and have him
work on your server. Shouldn't take more than about 15 minutes
once they are on site. But it will take some hands-on stuff.

If you don't have a propeller hat in the closet, read through
and see if you want to give this a shot - should save you a few
bucks.

This particular machine is a Windows 2003 R2 server
running in an virtual environment at a data center about 20 miles from
where I live. I was able to bring it back to life remotely. The system
was constantly rebooting - it would echo a few pings, then stop echoing,
then echo them again a minute or so later as it rebooted:

I didn't know it was rebooting until I connected to the
local console. I couldn't connect via RDP for reasons that would become
obvious once I attached to the console and saw this:

The exact message (mostly for search engines as they
can't read the screen above) read:

STOP: c0000135 {Unable To Locate Component}This
application has failed to start because CSRSRV.dll was not found.
Re-installing the application may fix this problem.

No amount of safe mode booting, booting into last known
good configuration, boot logging, or anything else brought it back from
the dead.

The Fix!

You have to uninstall Microsoft KB3045999.

There are manual ways to do this, and a pretty simple automatic way.
Catch is, you have to be able to get your system booted in order to do
the uninstall. The quickest / easiest way to do this is from the
recovery console.

If you are in front of your system, put in the Server 2003 or Server
2003 R2 boot CD into the drive and let it boot. You'll have to hit a key
to boot from the CD.

In my case, I was booting a virtual machine so I had to "virtually"
insert the ISO of the CD into the virtual drive:

Once booted, you'll get a screen that looks like this:

Hit R to Repair! Your next screen looks like this:

Hit the number that corresponds to your windows installation, then
enter the password. As you can see, I didn't get the password correct on
the first... or second tries. Third time was the charm.

From here, type the following:

cd $ntuninstallkb3045999$cd spuninstbatch spuninst.txt

You'll see a bunch of files that get copied from the uninstall
directory. When done, remove the CD, reboot the server, and disable that
update until it gets fixed!

There are details of the security bulletin and other information
here: